Hands On With Acer's Chromebook R 11

By
PC Mag ME TeamSept. 3, 2015, 1:30 p.m.

REPORTING FROM BERLIN—Intel kicked off this morning by praising mutant laptops to the highest. Bring on the 2-in-1s, the chipmaker said, the detachable keyboards, the swivel hinges. They don't even have to run Windows, as I saw with Acer's slightly silly Chromebook R 11, the first Chromebook to act like a Lenovo Yoga (or, to be more tactful, an Acer Aspire R 14.)

The R 11 doesn't feel expensive, but it doesn't feel horribly cheap. The textured, white finish is just fine, and the separated keys reminded me a lot of slightly looser MacBook keys. The 11-inch screen, at 1,366 by 768, feels like the right resolution, and there are plenty of ports.

Here's the problem with playing with laptops that won't be released until next month: the unit I was playing with had trouble waking up from sleep. The hinge was sticky enough to prop it up in table-tent mode, and the screen automatically reoriented when I flipped it into laptop mode. But slam it closed, open it up, pound on the keyboard...and there was none of the instant wake you should get from a Chromebook. I had to reboot the thing.

When it was working, though, the Intel Celeron processor made things feel responsive, if not thrilling. It's a Chromebook. It surfs the Web. You get what you get. If you want to use your Chromebook to play a lot of Web videos, the R 11's tent mode looks perfect. Otherwise, this is a capable Chromebook, or it will be once it gets its firmware worked out.